It was often thought that, because women live longer than men, it was obvious that they would have Alzheimer’s at a higher rate. However, studies are beginning to show that age and lifespan are not causing this disparity. Women make up two-thirds of Americans suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. Not only that, but women tend to decline faster than men. We now know that Alzheimer’s disease, thinking problems, and memory problems are more prevalent in women than men, but we don’t know what the cause is yet. Read More

Unfortunately, this is no joke: a Vermont pediatrician decided not to treat a 6-day-old child because her parents were lesbians. Krista and Jami Contreras were married in Vermont in 2012 and welcomed their daughter, Bay, in 2014.
“As far as we know, Bay doesn’t have a sexual orientation yet so I’m not really sure [why] that matters,” Jami said. “We’re not your patient, she’s your patient. And the fact is that your job is to keep babies healthy... Read More

Finally. A new form of birth control for men may be available to the public as early as 2017. Yes, ladies, it is actually going to happen. Cue celebratory dance.
According to the Parsemus Foundation, Vasalgel is a non-hormonal contraceptive option that has proved so successful in trials with baboons that scientists believe they’re just about ready to start testing it on humans. The contraceptive requires a single treatment to be effective, as opposed to female oral contraception which necessitates a daily dose. Read More

Throughout my experience as a blogger for BUST, one thing has become increasingly apparent - we are in the midst of an information war. Trolls have infiltrated the cyber world, and have made it their mission to bombard the internet with absurd propaganda in an effort to divert people from the scientific facts. And sometimes it’s less about which side has the better argument and more about WHO CAN SHOUT THE LOUDEST.
Throughout the past 20 years, a lot of pseudoscience has spread over the internet regarding natural child birth. Read More

Imagine earning the opportunity to go out into the field and explore the world, as a budding young scientist, only to be greeted by predatory superiors.
In a PLOS ONE survey of mostly archaeologists and anthropologists, 64% of field scientists reported having experienced sexual harassment and 22% reported sexual assault in the field. The academic article also noted that “73% percent of female [medical trainees] had experienced workplace sexual harassment during their residency," meaning that this problem is not unique to scientists working in the field. Read More

It’s hard to find the appropriate words for a situation as unsettling as this one.
In February of last year, a male gynecologist at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore was discovered to have photographed and recorded videos of his patients in the examination room with a secret camera that he wore around his neck.
An investigation was launched that uncovered around 1,200 videos and 140 photographs of over 8,000 patients at his home. The OBGYN in question, Dr. Nikita Levy, committed suicide soon after the investigation began. Read More

According to The American Cancer Society, the chance of a woman having invasive breast cancer during her lifetime is about 1 in 8. The chance of dying from breast cancer is about 1 in 36. They also predicted there to be approximately 40,000 deaths from breast cancer in 2o14.
These numbers are scary. As the daughter of a breast cancer survivor, and a woman with a family history of the disease, the presence of these statistics looming around the internet are all the more frightening. Read More

There’s been a lot of buzz around a new study that examines the differences between male and female brains. The study, conducted by the University of Pennsylvania’s Ragini Verma and her colleagues and recently published in the journal PNAS, uses advanced imaging to map the connectivity of the left and right brain hemispheres of males and females. The researchers concluded that male and female brains have fundamental differences: males have more interconnectivity in each hemisphere, while women have more connectivity between the two. Read More

Many women suffering from breast cancer face the possibility of a double mastectomy, a surgical procedure in which the breasts are partially or completely removed. In addition to the pain and fear of undergoing a major surgery, some women express feelings of grief over the loss of their breasts. For this reason, this beautiful dance, performed by a woman and her team of doctors, is an especially moving affirmation of the resilience of the female-- and human!-- body. Read More

The other day I was listening to an old episode of This American Life with Ira Glass called “Testosterone.” In one story, a transgender male feminist explained how his eyes uncontrollably wandered to female bodies when he took testosterone. He was heartbroken by the fact that he spent more time looking at chests than faces. Read More